


Falling into the Stars

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 03:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8128684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: Alternate universe where you get songs stuck in your head when your soulmate does, Lapis of course hears vaporwave and smells pennies.They meet at a restaurant and both are very sincerely thick-headed about the obvious.Senses connected soulmate!AU





	

**Author's Note:**

> I know I have so many stories going on right now, but I couldn't get this one out of my head
> 
> also warning for mentions of a past abusive relationship with Jasper

‘ _I. HATE. VAPORWAVE._ ’ Lapis writes in her journal when she’s 21.

She scrawls it in a black and white composition notebook that she’s had since she was 16, she had one before that as well but she filled it up.

It was a note to be given to her ‘destined,’ a series of records of every time she had felt them on the horizon, just below the surface, and everything she wanted to say about it.

*

Lapis had first recognized she had a soulmate right before her thirteenth birthday, not everyone was ‘linked’ in the same way. 

She however, had smelled penny’s and something bright and metallic in the air, her heart raced.

Her mouth hung open and she looked for something, something that told her this wasn’t a dream. But she was sitting in the windowsill of her mom’s apartment and nothing but the wind and distant car smog filled the air. And the metallic scent of penny’s that couldn’t be placed as anything but them.

**

When she was 14 she started getting songs stuck in her head, songs she had never heard before. Sometimes it was a wave of distant classical music that crooned on violin strings and hung off piano keys like raindrops.

It was uncommon to have so many senses linked but it did drill a hole of curiosity in her gut. She closed her eyes and sometimes pop music that tasted sugary and demanding told her her soulmate was at the very least interesting.

She rushed into her mom’s room that night and scrambled onto her bed, “Mom!” She said with flushed cheeks and a speedy heart, “Mom, do you think they’ll like evanescence?”  
  
Her mom looks up at her wearily, she kisses her on the forehead. “I think you’ll have to see.”

“I want them to like evanescence.” She pouts and tucks the strand of dark hair behind her ear.

Her mom shakes her head and puts her book down, “They’ll like _you_ , sweetheart, not your music taste.”

“Like you and dad?” She says in a small voice, curiosity driven into the frown on her lips.

Her mom shakes her head, “Not look your father and I, no.” She gives a sad smile and bundles Lapis up into her lap. She kisses her on the head, “Better.”

Her mom had a blurred over flower mark on her wrist. Lapis only found out when she was 15 why people took a second glance at her mom in the subway, why they sometimes shuffled a little further away from her on the sidewalk.

Lapis wasn’t sure she wanted a soulmate when she found out it could be broken. And then people would furrow their brow and say ‘poor girl.’ Poor thing. ‘What a mistake.’

Lapis listened to Rocky Horror Picture show and smells pine forest that night.

***

When she was 16 the dreams start coming, little flashes of unfamiliar faces and places she knew her mind wouldn’t create. Her soulmate dreamt in black white, old picture films and frantic running down school hallways.

Sometimes they fell into the stars. One moment she’d be lying on a plain of grass, then she simply started falling upward, bright and terrible the stars would engulf everything. It was a strange recurring dream that left Lapis breathless and reaching for her blankets and the ground.

****

When Lapis is 19 she dates a girl who is _not_ her soulmate, she didn’t listen to techno or classical and despised bubblegum pop. They met at a train-wreck they had both gone to look at like tragedy-tourists. They had accidently talked and watched the sun set on the wreckage.

Their relationship was never soft, never pretty.

She took Lapis in her arms and she kissed her like it hurt, and Lapis told her about the sound of raindrops in the night when it was clear out and metal pine forests that hung like a picture in the back of her head.

Jasper frowned and dug her fingers into her wrist. “Don’t you know those things are a disease?” She growled, “They want everyone in neat boxes.” She shook her head and drew Lapis into another searing kiss.

They throw rocks at passing cars and go swim in Lake Superior when the days are hot or cold and Jasper strips Lapis’s clothes off and it’s okay.

Then the words come out hot and arid, the little things that had always stung become open wounds and Lapis starts to cry herself to sleep at night when Jasper sneaks into her bed.

One evening they almost drown- trying to drag each other to the bottom of the lake in an extension of a fight they had. She gasps and struggles to the surface, but they held each other down.

She’s 19 and she moves away the next day, on heels of glass and wings of fury, she doesn’t even say goodbye. Sometimes she still thinks about her, and sometimes she doesn’t.

******

When she was 21 her soulmate listened to vaporwave and Lapis sometimes feels the prickle of water that isn’t there, the sting on the top of her mouth of burning soup. She gets K-pop stuck in her head and paints her nails bright blue every day.

Her mom called her on Sundays, and Lapis has to tell she’s fine, she liked Beach City, she liked being a dishwasher.

Most of that was a lie, and most of dishwashing made her want to never look at another body of water ever again.

It was a small bistro, run by one largely overdramatic server named Pearl, a relaxed manager who Lapis suspected was far too cool for the tourist-stop hole-in-wall restaurant, and the head chef who was an easy-going young woman who probably should get a few more orders right than she did.

Lapis spent three weeks there before her deep animosity for pruney fingers began, and three weeks before a new bus girl arrives with a wide feline smile. 

She had frazzled blonde hair that stood upright and dressed in spandex tights with galaxies on them. Spandex. Lapis wrinkles her nose.

Her eyes were a bright green and she held up an ipod with an alien sticker on it, she hears some of the music distantly. Lapis blinks and feels a moment of falling. Stars and stars and stars, but then she takes a deep breath and turns away.

She holds her breath for the rest of the night, a distant humming trills through her head and she closes her eyes and mindlessly hums along to it.

At the end of the night, she hears the tuneless sound as bright as lightening.

Lapis put away the last of the dishes and turns around.

“What is that?” She asks slowly.

Peridot blinked at her as she finished wringing out a rag. “I dunno. I made it up.”

Lapis gives a small smile and something unclenches in her chest, she walks over slowly and hums the sound back to her.

An excitable smile crosses the young woman’s face, she strides over and her small hand shyly slides into hers, it feels like falling.

“Sooo all those years…” she trials off and their eyes meet, Peridot gives her a cheeky grin. “My immortal? Really?”

Lapis shakes her head, “You’re wearing spandex.” She responds with a grin, “come one.” She jerks her head, “I have a notebook to give you.”

She takes her home with her. They kiss on the third date and tastes like she was 13 and everything was new.

There she was. She found her, and fell.


End file.
